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Archive

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Contents 1 API 1.1 The API and the move to lyrics.wikia.com 1.2 SOAP API 2 Not Categorized 2.1 Curly brackets 2.2 Replace text 2.3 A Mystery Regarding "What Links Here" Lists 2.4 Wrong thumbnail 2.5 LyricWiki:Shortcuts 2.6 API - "Everything it used to be able to do except for display lyrics" 2.7 Invite 2.8 Spam block 2.9 Variables 2.10 Spam Filter 2.11 Bots & Cyborgs permissions 2.12 Gracenote pages 2.13 Image files

API

The API and the move to lyrics.wikia.com

Are there any changes planned for the lyricwiki API regarding the move to wikia? Or will it persist in its current form? I'm especially interested in the function http://lyricwiki.org/api.php?func=getSong&fmt=xml&artist=<Artist>&song=<Title> and the <url>...</url> part of the returned XML. In case you plan to take the API offline, could you make its code for mapping Artist/Title to wiki URLs public instead? 84.56.8.204 14:29, September 2, 2009 (UTC)

I agree. My application also relies on this functionality and I can't do anything but waiting for an action from you. Please, decide what to do and declare here. If you plan to go offline, please consider to make the API open source as wikia's. So, we can continue to develop and use it. Thank you.

The API's mapping abilities should stay the same. If there are changes, they're not intentional (except that we did add snippets of lyrics which is considered Fair Use). Also, it is now Open Source as it is in Wikia's public repository.

Thanks,

-Sean Colombo 00:22, November 6, 2009 (UTC)

SOAP API

I would like some clarifications about the SOAP API: It seems it isn't working at the moment:

 wget 'http://lyrics.wikia.com/server.php?wsdl'
 --2009-09-16 20:21:28--  http://lyrics.wikia.com/server.php?wsdl
 Risoluzione di lyrics.wikia.com... 83.223.112.142, 83.223.112.138
 Connessione a lyrics.wikia.com|83.223.112.142|:80... connesso.
 HTTP richiesta inviata, in attesa di risposta... 404 Not Found
 2009-09-16 20:21:29 ERRORE 404: Not Found

Does it have a new URL or has it been shut up completely due to the migration to Wikia? Thanks, SukkoPera 18:31, September 16, 2009 (UTC)

Is it possible to answer the question above? rockordie 17:53, October 16, 2009 (UTC)

I am currently waiting for access to the code. If I get access, I should be able to have this fixed up within a day or two.

Sorry for the extreme delays -Sean Colombo 17:53, October 16, 2009 (UTC)

This was fixed yesterday morning (srsly... that was way too long.). -Sean Colombo 20:58, October 30, 2009 (UTC)

Not Categorized

Curly brackets

{ and } are forbidden in page names as well; you might want to fix the API to convert them to ().
On a related note… Should "F#" in a song title be changed to "F Sharp" with a redirect at "FNumber " so the API can find it, or (following LW:PN strictly) directly to "FNumber "? Please say the first one… Please say the first one… — 6×9 (Talk) 08:05, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

1. Good point on the curly braces... I updated LW:PN and the SOAP to handle them. I'm kinda surprised that we never noticed that restriction before!
2. If the song title is pronounced "F Sharp" then I think it def. makes more sense F Sharp that be the page name and throwing a redirect from "FNumber". :)

-Sean Colombo (talk|contribs) 15:32, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Replace text

Great idea, I tried a single character replacement, clicked proceed and after 5+ minutes I got the timeout page. It either needs more memory or a higher timeout value. I also get Timeout when batch moving artists with lots of songs like Carpenters. Hope the fix is easy. tia+cheers ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏) 13:19, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes I tried using this today for the first time, I wanted to change all the album links on the individual song pages linking to a various artists compilation album (well series). I got timeout too. I think it's because it is searching every page in the site (except maybe talk pages) That's one hell of a lot of pages.  ♫_♫Яєd_{xx ♪}♫♪_♫♪ ^Actions _Words 02:30, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't suppose it could be tweaked to allow for searches across pages with a specified prefix…? Because that's what it would probably be used for most of the time anyway, like cleaning up after batch moves. — 6x9 (Talk) 03:46, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I turned off the timeout (at least, the one that I had in there... dunno if there is one in there by default) as an experiment. So huge batch-moves and replacetexts should work. I'm not sure this is gonna work out in the long-run (because a spider could latch onto a really long running page and just drive us into the ground. But we shall see!

-Sean Colombo (talk|contribs) 21:38, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, now it times out after 15 minutes. I wonder if it's searching every page or using an index like serach engines do. ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏) 16:41, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Beastly! I don't think it uses an index. Any thoughts on where to go from here? Attempt unlimited timeout? Make it faster? Get rid of extension? lol

-Sean Colombo 02:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Who would write such an extension not using an index? Unless it was intended for wikis with only a handful of pages. I wonder if unlimited timeout is safe...A useful extension would filter by artist first (as 6 times 9 indicated earlier) that way the hit list always remains under 1000, and a 15 minute timeout would be more than plenty. ∃cho⚡ierr∀ ( ☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 03:16, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Archiving. This extension wasn't scalable enough for our uses. -Sean Colombo 00:32, November 6, 2009 (UTC)

A Mystery Regarding "What Links Here" Lists

Please take a look at the discussion on Senvaikis's talk page. It appears that when the What Links Here list is generated (at least for Artist pages), not all items that link to the page are shown. I did a few tests (look for my comments) and perhaps it's a cache issue?    Kiefer    talk    contribs    admin   01:33, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Do you think it would be worth a shot to add an invisible link to the artist page at the very beginning of the {{Album}} template, in case that's the root of the problem? (Also wondering whether the new links-to-redirects special page might be affected by this problem too…) — 6x9 (Talk) 18:26, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

This convo is kind of a duplicate now that it's being tracked in the bugs list on my talk page. The link to Senv's talk page has now been added to the section of the bugs list pertaining to What Links Here.

-Sean Colombo 00:41, November 6, 2009 (UTC)

Wrong thumbnail

[1] (as used by ArtistHeader) shows the wrong flag, somehow – it should look like this… — 6×9 (Talk) 00:40, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Seems the thumbnail is left over from an earlier upload… Seems also like both are wrong and the official flag is either this or the French tricolore… Why does all this country stuff have to be so complicated? I'll gp and pester Kiefer. — 6×9 (Talk) 00:49, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Haa haa  ♫_♫Яєd_{xx ♪}♫♪_♫♪ ^Actions _Words 16:11, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Careful. If you're going to comb through each of my postings for typos, I might just return the favour. You wouldn't stand a chance, with your preview button broken. — 6×9 (Talk) 02:45, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Seems to have fixed itself. Possibly a side-effect of the migration.

-Sean Colombo 00:45, November 6, 2009 (UTC)

LyricWiki:Shortcuts

I don't know if this is your fault but seeing as you appear to have been the last one in the room I'm going to blame you anyway ;). All the LW: shortcuts are broken and are now showing as dead/empty links. Seems like "LW" now transmogrifies (you can substitute an alternative word there if you like but I kinda like the way that one rolls) to LyricWiki, so when you click on LW:PN...

Also, can you do me a favour please and stick your new LW:GD (lol) LyricWiki:General disclaimer page into a category please? Only I try to sweep all these uncategorised pages from the hidden corners of LyricWikiland and categorise them (I like to believe that there's not too many now that have escaped my attention). Well, perhaps it's just me, but to my way of thinking there's hardly seems any point in creating a page if it can never be found ;)

Nag, nag, nag...  ♫_♫Яєd_{xx ♪}♫♪_♫♪ ^Actions _Words 18:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for pointing that out! Yesterday I added a feature which automatically treats "LW" as a shortcut for "LyricWiki" so it was looking for "LyricWiki:PN" instead of "LW:PN". I went through and recreated the pages with the new names now so everything should work again.

Thanks,

-Sean Colombo (talk|contribs) 21:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

API - "Everything it used to be able to do except for display lyrics"

I have been using the API for sometime, purely just to list the discography of a said artist by getting the location of:

http://lyricwiki.org/api.php?func=getSong&artist=[ARTIST]&song=&fmt=xml

However i am unable to get the discography list even though the LyricWiki API Developers letter states that, "Everything it used to be able to do except for display lyrics".

Am i missing something really simple?

--79.76.197.171 17:07, September 24, 2009 (UTC)

I think this message is from when the discography parsing was flat out broken. This has been fixed. -Sean Colombo 21:06, October 30, 2009 (UTC)

Invite

• LyricWiki_talk:Administrators_Portal#The_Despised_and_Torturous_LW:PN    Kiefer    talk    contribs    admin   18:14, September 15, 2009 (UTC)

Spam block

This is Senv's site. Can you exclude from spam filter please? http:// svincas. somee. com/ Thanks!  ♫_♫Яєd_{xx ♪}♫♪_♫♪ ^Actions _Words 15:17, September 4, 2009 (UTC)

Generally speaking, there's no big difference if this url included in filter or not. Address of Lwt ClickOnce app, published on this site, was the only point related to LW, but it never was used properly and, keeping in mind last events, - never will be... --Senvaikis ^(talk) 19:52, September 4, 2009 (UTC)

Ah, Ok well if you're Ok with it Senv. I just wanted to try and get it sorted for you before you became aware of it :-) ♫_♫Яєd_{xx ♪}♫♪_♫♪ ^Actions _Words 17:08, September 5, 2009 (UTC)

Now that LWT is back, I'm not sure if this is a problem again. Pinged Senv here.

-Sean Colombo 23:43, October 15, 2009 (UTC)

This has been resolved -Sean Colombo 01:01, November 6, 2009 (UTC)

Variables

The Variables Extension got broken. {{#vardefine:test|123}}{{#var:test}} returns an empty string, when it should return "123". Since many of our most widely-used templates rely on variables, it would be nice if this could be fixed really, really, REALLY quickly. — 6×9 (Talk) 11:26, September 23, 2009 (UTC)

Think the fact that artists aren't showing up in the footer sometimes is related to this too. Random page for your viewing pleasure here. NYCScribbler 13:29, September 23, 2009 (UTC)

Yep. Many external links don't work (Discogs, MusicBrainz, akuma… all rely on the pagetype variable); tl:AlbumFooter gets artist name and album title from variables defined in tl:Album (same with artist name in tl:SongFooter); tl:wplink (which is called by all other templates that provide Wikipedia links) uses variables (because otherwise the code would have been way more complex)…

It would be nice if, in the future, users could be warned about construction work which might result in bugs, server errors etc. (by using MediaWiki:Sitenotice or something). — 6×9 (Talk) 13:52, September 23, 2009 (UTC)

Rustling up someone with server-access... -Sean Colombo 16:48, September 23, 2009 (UTC)

Looking in to this. I'll let you know what I find out. --KyleH (talk) 16:58, September 23, 2009 (UTC)

Phew...6 ain't nice when he has to resort to font tags ;) Looks like my karma isn't the only one affected. Oh and btw Sean I patrolled your edit (above). It was OK. I've seen better like 'russling' properly spelt but it'll do ;)  ♫_♫Яєd_{xx ♪}♫♪_♫♪ ^Actions _Words 17:57, September 23, 2009 (UTC)

Thankfully, it appears to be fixed. I also think that it would be nice to get periodic updates as to what's going on with the site. Users would be more likely to forgive weirdness such as with the variables if they had a clue what was going on/being attempted with the site. A thousand blessings to whoever fixed it, and to whoever broke it - a pox on your firstborn, you ugly wart on a salamander's tongue.  :-] (Man, I love Bloom County.)    Kiefer    talk    contribs    admin   04:18, September 24, 2009 (UTC)

I'll second that!

Now it's speech time *clears throat*

We have all worked very hard to make this a good site and an enjoyable experience for our visitors and it is upsetting me greatly that this seems now to be gowing down the pan. It certainly doesn't help that others are now affecting what we do, making changes we haven't/don't agree with (e.g. the additional conflicting notes added to the help pages?), and indeed breaking things on the site (e.g. contributions, user names, etc.), all without so much as a by your leave.

I don't know exactly who is to blame, but I for one believe our efforts and commitment to this site, by which I mean LyricWiki, deserve a bit more respect than we are getting at the present time from the Wikia staff you know who you are. It also isn't good for a site when users are looking for answers to various problems they are encountering, by asking those they expect to know, the admins, only to be informed that they don't know themselves what's going on, or indeed how long it will be before it is resolved.

As for the awful rename situation, it is beyond a joke. I'd also put any money you like on the fact that if our brilliant LW technical experts had handled that, it would have been done properly, as it was meant to have been done, with the least upset to our users and without losing any users as a result.

Communication and setting up of user accounts are very basic issues. They are the groundwork. And as far as I can see, until these basic issues are resolved, we can't really move forward I couldn't quite decide whether to type "forward" or "on" so change it if you want - rfl.  ♫_♫Яєd_{xx ♪}♫♪_♫♪ ^Actions _Words 08:58, September 24, 2009 (UTC)

First of all, let me apologize. Things haven't gone as smoothly as they could go, and that's mostly my fault. I haven't been very good at reaching out to you and explaining exactly what's happen. There is no excuse for that, and I am sorry about it.

We ended up having to proceed with the transfer much quicker than we had originally planned. The legal action pending against Sean forced him to shut down the old LyricWiki much more quickly than we had hoped, so we have been behind the curve on bugs and tasks. We weren't able to do some of the planning and preparation that we typically do during other imports. MediaWiki wasn't designed for situations like this one, so every import is unique and difficult. Because of the API, custom extensions, and a number of other factors, LyricWiki is the most complex wiki that we have ever imported. Add, on top of that, that we are having to jump through a number of hoops to keep the music industry happy as we go along, and it makes for a pretty complicated situation. That said, I it seems like TOR has done a pretty good job of responding to bug reports and keeping you updated on the status of them. He tells me that he should be able to start working on the renames very soon; however, typically that only comes after the rest of the wiki is completely up and running.

Regarding some of the other bits, such as shared help, if there are any features that are active on Wikia that you are not particularly fond of, please let me know and I'll be happy to look in to disabling them or modifying them to better suit your needs. For your reference, we do code releases every Wednesday. Most of these releases are just bug fixes and don't involve down time or major changes. As you found out yesterday, though, sometimes they can introduce bugs. For information about major changes and new features that are coming out, keep an eye on the Wikia Staff Blog.

Finally, if you have any questions or concerns at all for me, please ask me directly (or email me). I'm trying to keep an eye on all the discussions and bug reports here; however, sometimes I miss some. I'm also in IRC a good part of the day if you need some immediate assistance.

Thanks! --KyleH (talk) 14:49, September 24, 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your response Kyle.

I'm sure I speak on behalf of my fellow admin and other LyricWikians when I say it is very much appreciated.  ♫_♫Яєd_{xx ♪}♫♪_♫♪ ^Actions _Words 06:50, September 25, 2009 (UTC)

There is now just one thing I'd like to ask. Using this post as an example, rather than doing stuff that affects the site and goes horribly wrong, why don't you increase the chances of things going right by consulting with those in the know. Our tech guys are all brilliant and obviously understand mostly everything about the workings of the site.

I guess what I'm really asking for is for a bit of togetherness, for us to work together on issues which could have a far reaching and drastic affect upon the site. Although 6x9 is our most active tech atm, he is not our only expert. I'm actually pretty hot myself ;) *Cushion ready to hit anyone who tells Kyle otherwise* And since seventeen heads are better than one not saying that I would like 17 heads of course...it'd be a bit heavy to cart that lot around all day, don't you think?, I would suggest that if you are in agreement with this idea, you post in our Administrators Portal.  ♫_♫Яєd_{xx ♪}♫♪_♫♪ ^Actions _Words 07:58, September 25, 2009 (UTC)

I hear you, and I agree with you. I've watchlisted the Administrators Portal and will be keeping an eye on it. We'll certainly be working together more as things move along. Regarding this post, I was just trying to fix it as quickly as possible, given that I found the problem ... and 6x9's feedback identified a bug which, if we fix, should allow us to do it much easier. :) --KyleH (talk) 21:20, September 25, 2009 (UTC)

So what happened with disabling right click, copy and paste throughout the site?  ♫_♫Яєd_{xx ♪}♫♪_♫♪ ^Actions _Words 06:53, October 3, 2009 (UTC)

It will have to be done on all pages which have a <lyrics> section in them, it appears.

-Sean Colombo 23:49, October 15, 2009 (UTC)

Spam Filter

The spam filter prevents the page Symphony_X:The_Serpenta­s_Kiss from being edited, probably because it has a soft hyphen in the title. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dwikiv (talk • contribs), 21:02, 25 October 2009.

No need to adjust the spam filter for that one; I've deleted it. (Correct page is at Symphony X:Serpent's Kiss.) — 6×9 (Talk) 21:18, October 25, 2009 (UTC)

Bots & Cyborgs permissions

Hi Sean,

Is it possible to Lwt enjoy the same permissions as bots have @mwapi?. Now it's included into group "bot", but mwapi treats it as an ordinary user, setting response limit to 500 instead of 5000 for bots. Tia, obo Lwt --Senvaikis ^(talk) 09:00, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

Hmm...there's no reason Lwt should be treated any differently than other bots as far as I know. I'll double-check on the response limit... maybe it's only 500 for bots on Wikia in general? oO

-Sean Colombo 15:52, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

Senv, can you do an action=query&meta=userinfo and also make sure you're sending your logged in cookie on GETs too (not just posts) and see if that sheds any more light?

Thanks,

-Sean Colombo 21:47, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, Sean - never thought I may be so stupid. Of course, mwpapi didn't grant bot permissions to Lwt's GET requests, 'cause they were cookieless. Lwt uses cookied requests only for updating, e.g. - POST's. Why I haven't tested such queries just on browser, logged as Lwt (that's equivalent to mentioned cookied action) - it's just beyond me :). Anyway, now I did that (logged as Lwt), and have got 5000-length response to my browser without any problems :). I haven't tried it from programm yet, - need some time to rewrite most HttpRequests & WebClients in Lwt. But I'm sure it'll work :).

Once more - sorry for disturbing with such stupid questions. Thanks, --Senvaikis ^(talk) 07:00, October 28, 2009 (UTC)

Haha, every programmer does something like that from time to time (myself included, obviously)... no worries :)

-Sean Colombo 16:52, October 28, 2009 (UTC)

Gracenote pages

…show up in Üncategörized Pages, you might want to add Category:Gracenote or something like that… — 6×9 (Talk) 19:34, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

Good call :D I'll um... tell the person who writes that bot, lol. 0:-)

-Sean Colombo 20:26, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

BTW, is there a plan to mark "regular" LW pages that have an available Gracenote page? The "prettiest" method would be to have a Gracenote icon next to the page title, but I'm not sure if that'd be possible. If not, then perhaps next to the page ranking star?    Kiefer    talk    contribs    admin   20:50, October 28, 2009 (UTC)

That'd be a good idea on where to put it. Can't think of any reason we'd really need that link though. Do you see a benefit in linking to the static (ie: not editable) version?

-Sean Colombo 20:52, October 28, 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there really is a super-good reason. Reference for the editable version, perhaps? I just figured that the Gracenote pages link to the "regular" pages, so vice-versa might be nice. I wouldn't want to make the link as blatantly obvious as on the Gracenote pages, but as long as we have the "official" Gracenote version (and from experience we know how accurate these "official" versions can be) we might as well acknowledge that available information somehow. Certainly not a high-priority project, though. Just something that I thought I'd bring up since it might be something that could be done at the same time as each page was being put into a Gracenote category.    Kiefer    talk    contribs    admin   23:57, October 29, 2009 (UTC)

Actually, as it turns out, there is an extension that can help us determine that (DPL). However, I was thinking more of doing the opposite... creating a category for Missing Community Version or something. The category would contain a list of Gracenote pages for which we don't have a community editable equivalent. It might help us fill in the gaps in our corpus (although in most cases, I'd assume it would just be a redirect that we actually need).

- User:Sean Colombo 01:50, November 5, 2009 (UTC)

Image files

Some pretty weird things are going on with these today. I keep getting error messages..like "No such file/file name", "Can't reproduce thumbnail" etc.  ♫_♫Яєd_{xx ♪}♫♪_♫♪ ^Actions _Words 12:57, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I had the same problems yesterday. Usually they resolved themselves; after waiting a few seconds and refreshing everything was OK. — 6×9 (Talk) 12:59, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Ahhhh. I think I know what's wrong. Dang. I'll temporarily fix it right now, then fix it for real tonight. Bah.

Thanks for letting me know,

-Sean Colombo (talk|contribs) 13:03, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Alright, temporarily fixed. For the record, what I think happened is that there are NFS problems from something I just tried. I tried to make it so that all 3 apache servers did both the API and the site (previously, one was specifically for the API and two were specifically for the site). I'm pretty sure that I never set up NFS on the apache server that used to be API-specific, so there were probably a bunch of image problems when you happened to get sent to that server. I put it back to the old configuration for now and will try to set up NFS on that server also when I get a chance.

-Sean Colombo (talk|contribs) 13:09, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Rfl..so you're saying I uploaded screenshots for nothing then? As I thought 6, Sean's been pressing buttons again ;)  ♫_♫Яєd_{xx ♪}♫♪_♫♪ ^Actions _Words 13:12, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I um... found those screenshots in Special:RecentChanges and that's how I figured out the problem 0:-)

I think I've fixed it the permanent way now. Please let me know if you see any more image weirdness!

Thanks again for reporting this,

-Sean Colombo (talk|contribs) 01:44, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Haa haa you aren't a very convincing liar Sean, but I appreciate the gesture x Thanks for fixing.  ♫_♫Яєd_{xx ♪}♫♪_♫♪ ^Actions _Words 23:45, 19 August 2009 (UTC)